Sunday, February 03, 2008

The good folks who dole out money to science geeks had my mind in their Vulcan death-grip for the last couple of weeks.

As such, my carbon-footprint is now enormous, with bunyons.

Why?

Because I've been forced to climb into the cigar-tube to criss-cross a frozen Canuckistan repeatedly.

And almost everytime it has been in a crate stamped 'Airbus'.

Yesterday it was one of those lumbering A-330's.

Well, actually, for almost three hours the thing didn't lumber at all.

Instead, it sat on the tarmack next to that enormous toothless tusk of white elephanstalintine ugliness known as Pearson International's Terminal One.

The delay was caused by a mellastian blast of the white stuff. It was endless and I was sardined into seat 24C located directly in front of the bathroom and directly below the blower that was sending all of the exhaust and the de-icing fumes straight to my pulmonary alveoli.

There was one saving grace, however.

It was so bad that the couple returning home from their time-share in Castro's Cuba (weird that, eh?) forced a move and I suddenly had an entire row of seats to myself.

****

To tell you the truth, most of the time, I actually like flying.

Because, unlike Lotusland's former King George, I can actually work when I'm sitting in economy.

And once the geek-junk is done in the absence of the toobz there is no choice but to make like the old days and read the dead-tree versions of newspapers cover-to-cover.

Yesterday, being Friday (ie. movie day), I read the NYTimes ($1.40 in T.O vs $3.18 in B.C.) all the way through.

And I did not like what I saw.

First, there was that cover story of and shopped-up image to give the illusion of a freshly kerrytoxed Hilary facing-off against Obama in the CNN debates.

And then there was more of that "Bill screwed-up in South Carolina codswallop" (real story?......Camp-Hill knew they were doomed in S.C. from the get-go so they engaged in a little race-baiting innoculation for a Still-Scared-Shiteless-Of-SistaSolja-at-General-Election-Time Nation)

Bobo, with the annointing of McCain, made me positively ill (maybe because I can smell the huge mountains of oh-so-sensible centrist bullshit located just over the horizon that will soon be shovelled, hand over fist, onto a willing St. John and his soon-to-be-sidekick Holy Joe by the likes of Tweety and Mr. Timmeh).

Even Mr. Krugman left a sour taste in my mouth, what with his column on the importance of John Edwards' 'ideas' (if those ideas were so important for Democratic renewal and issues positioning why didn't Edwards rebuff the buy-off and stay out there on the campaign trail for the duration to flog them).

Anyway, there was one teensy bit of reporting/editorializing that I did enjoy, both for its style and its elan - even if it was only tongue-in-cheek.

It was an unbylined bit in the business section titled 'A $7 Billion Question' that discussed the down-grading of a big, steaming pile of 'assets' owned by investment banker Morgan Stanley into the Nintendo-world accounting status of 'Level 3'. Why the reclassification? Well, apparently, it's because turns out that the actual valuation of the paper is:

'based on inputs that are unknowable'

The truth; sure is a strange thing, indeed.

In the meantime, of course, the other big news is that Bernancke and the Fed have made damn sure that, as the pyramid crumbles at the bottom, more fool's gold will continue to be piled ever higher on top of Scheme Ponzi.

OK?

______Re: the footprint......Will work to shave it down with pumice and bike-riding - promise.As for the movies..... I'm very much looking forward to taking the girls to Persepolis.The Divine Ms. 'Z', by way of a piece from Robin Morgan, tells us why she is ready to go all the way for HRC.